


When The Daylight Comes

by writershapeholeonthedoor



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Cute, Domestic Fluff, Dorks in Love, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Idiots in Love, Romance, Short & Sweet, True Love, root prove one more time that she's able to do anything for shaw, shaw love her so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 01:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writershapeholeonthedoor/pseuds/writershapeholeonthedoor
Summary: Shaw don’t like sleeping in the dark after her return, so Root finds ways to make it easier for her.





	When The Daylight Comes

**Author's Note:**

> If you have a prompt you would like to send me, just send it to my Tumblr, @imagineheadcanonsarea. If you just want to talk, message me, I will love it. Or just send me an ask or look around my blog.  
Also, English is not my first language, so please let me know if there's anything wrong!

Nights used to be Shaw’s favorite part of her day. People would usually be at home after a hard day at work, so she wouldn’t have to deal with shitty people doing shitty things. It also meant that walking around unnoticed was much easier. She was also a night person, her body seemed to work better at night in comparison with day.

But nights started to mean something entirely different after Samaritan. Nights are dark. There’s no natural light, the sunlight didn’t shine in the sky, everything was so dark. Like Samaritan’s rooms.

She used to run around the neightbourhood after work was done, didn’t mattered the time. She used to walk down the block to buy a pizza or walk to the chinese place three blocks away. She used to climb into her building’s roof to watch the street, the cars, the people, the sky. She used to let all lights in her apartment off because she knew where everything was – and a part of her kept thinking that it was safer to keep the lights off and curtains shut.

Things changed. She didn’t liked to think about it, or acknowledge the fact that it did, but things weren’t the same after she escaped Samaritan. She liked the light now. She could see in the light, there was no shadows or dark places for people to hide if there was light. Shaw could see. She could be ready if Martine showed up in front of her, she could be ready if there was threat anywhere. She couldn’t do it when it was dark. She had many abilities, but night vision wasn’t one of them, sadly.

Shaw felt like a small child the first days after she got back. All lights on, all of them. And, even like that, she couldn’t sleep. She don’t think she had slept since Samaritan got her or since she escaped, nine months now. You would think you could go insane if you stayed nine months without sleep, and maybe she was, but Shaw never felt more awake.

A month after she was back to her apartment, so was Root. Shaw told her to leave, she screamed and demanded to be alone, but the hacker didn’t move an inch to get out. In fact, while Shaw gave her little show, Root walked around the place like it was hers, opening cabinets and pulling pans out like she was at a goddamn restaurant – it took Shaw two weeks to realize that Root had kept the place clean and... alive while she was gone.

Root had followed her to bed that night and she never left. Well, she did, you know, to work and stuff, but she was always there when Shaw went to bed again. Even if the marine didn’t slept, she would lie by her side and alow Root’s calm breath soothe her enough to, at least, close her eyes. And she took naps too. Usually right after they lie in bed, her body would be too tired and she would sleep for an hour or two, before something – fear – would wake her up and she would just stay there looking at the ceiling.

Lights always on.

Root never asked her why, or tried to turn them off, or moked her for acting like a scared child sleeping alone in the room for the first time. She just bought herself a sleep mask to keep the light out of her eyes – it had a Mickey’s eyes draw on it and it did freaked Shaw a little the first time woke up and saw it staring at her. Two months passed since she got back and she did little progress. At week two she was able to turn off the kitchen’s lights. At week four she turned off the living room and bathroom’s lights, then she was capable of closing the door of the empty room down the hallway.

The hallway’s lights were the most recent achievement – she had turned them off while following Root to bed without even realizing it. But the lamps in the bedroom were still on and she didn’t thought she could ever shut them. She hated Samaritan for making her act like that, but she hated herself even more for allowing them to win like that.

72 days since she was back, 72 days thinking that she was letting them taste victory like that, 72 days hating herself for being scared of something that wasn’t even there, 72 days where she didn’t felt safe enough in her own house to turn off the damn lights. She counted the days everyday in her head. Shaw always got surprised with how long it seemed since she got stuck in some asylum or faced simulations, and yet she couldn’t turn off the lights. She couldn’t run around the neighbourhood at night, she couldn’t go buy her dinner, she couldn’t go to her roof to look around for a while.

Root snored by her side and Shaw turned her head to look at the woman. The persian was lying in her back, arms crossed in her chest and body stiffed like she was a statue. Root, in the other hand, was lying on her stomach, left leg stretched until her toes were touching the edge, right leg folded almost until her knee was touching her chest, left arm under her pillow, while her right arm was thrown in Shaw’s direction – it had hit her shoulder before, so Shaw moved a little so her hand was resting in her pillow. Shaw was a little jealous that she could sleep. She could literally close her eyes and sleep.

Shaw sighed, moving to face the ceiling again. She had slept for one hour and forty five minutes before waking up in the middle of a bad dream – it started as a simulation where she killed Reese, Fusco, Finch and even Bear, but it turned out to be real, very real, and she was about to shot Root when she woke up. Bad dreams were common. They always were for her, now more than ever.

She was mad at herself. For letting Samaritan control her like that, for being captured in first place, for letting her mind play tricks with her. Shaw worked with U.S. Marine, she worked with ISA, she did things that would make most people puke and there she was, lying in her bed, staring at the lamp in her ceiling like it was the only thing keeping her attached to Earth. Quite stupid, if you asked her.

72 days. She was not going to let them control her anymore. Not Samaritan, not Martine, not some stupid light.

Shaw suddenly jumped in action, darting out off bed so fast that the thin sheet almost made her fall face first in the floor. Three large, and angry, steps and she reached the switch beside the door’s frame. Her fingers twitched when she touched it, almost like it shocked her, and she hesitated. She couldn’t see in the dark. _How was she supposed to know what was real?_

A simulation can’t last three months, Shaw, grab a pair. She wasn’t the best with encouraging herself – or anyone – but it made the trick. Her fingers finally moved again and all of sudden the room was dark. For a few seconds, all she could see was black. While her vision adjusted, Shaw took some very deep soothing breathes, until she was capable to see her hand in front of her face, the contour of the switch and the door’s handle. She could do it. That was her apartment, her room, she wouldn’t get scared there.

With a shaky sigh, Shaw turned around, ready to walk back to bed. She couldn’t see Root anymore, but her light snores were still filling the silence and it helped her calm down a bit more. She had to give seven steps to reach the bed side again, quietly thanking that she insisted to sleep in the closest side to the door. In her hurry, the former marine didn’t put her slippers on, so she just slide back in bed, grabbing the sheets with her right hand while feeling the mattress with the other. When her fingers touched Root’s skin, her breath got stuck in her throat and she shut her eyes, feeling the fear slowly crawl in her spine.

Feeling even more ridiculous, Shaw released all the air in her lungs and kept moving. She didn’t opened her eyes, there was no point in doing so since she couldn’t see anything, so she just slowly eased herself into the mattress and went back to her former position. Her body was five times more tense, back stiffed against the bed, arms strongly crossed, heavy breath. Shaw tried to tell herself that she wasn’t afraid, even if her whole body was the perfect image of fear.

_You’re patetic, hope you know that_. Shaw tried to calm down her heart beats, but she knew there was no way she was going to be able to do that. Every simulation started in the dark, she remembered that perfectly. She wished she could shot someone to occupy her mind with something else, because that was just another type of torture. However, Shaw was probably the most stubborn person that ever lived and she was aware of that. She was not going to give up, even if she stayed up all night, barely able to breath and getting more and more soaked in sweat. Samaritan was not going to win, not again.

She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, copying a rock, but all hopes to fall asleep slided off her mind as the minutes went by. With a deep sigh, Shaw opened her right eye, blinked, then opened both of them. She was quite expecting to something happen the second she stared back at the dark, but nothing happened. Nothing.

_Because there’s nothing here, Shaw, grow up_. Shaw realized she was actually staring at the corner, the part where the wall met the ceiling, so she slowly, very slowly, moved her eyes. She was going to find a fixed point to look at until the daylight started to shine throught the window, making it’s way inside the bedroom until the dark was gone. It was the only thing that soothed her mind a little – the knowledge that the dark would go away.

Her eyes were almost catching the lamp when something else catch her attention. There was something shining somewhere above her. Shaw frowned, confused, before allowing her eyes to search for the source of the glow. She had to blink twice before understanding what was going on.

Glow in the dark stickers. Like, several of them. _How did I not realized it before?_ There was enough stickers to fill a large space in the ceiling, almos as large as the bed under it, Shaw couldn’t understand how it went completly unnoticed by her. Right above her, straight with her line of sight when she opened her eyes, were planets. Well, glow in the dark planet stickers. The whole solar system, with the sun and all eight planets. All around it were stars from different sizes, big and small, really big and really small. There was also a shooting star, meteors, spaceships from all types, some cute aliens and astronauts, and hearts all over the place. She even spoted a very random t-rex somewhere and a bear, right beside the sun, who was literally right in front of her.

She couldn’t be mad. Root should have taken a very long time to place all of that stickers in her ceiling – there had to be at least two hundred of those. And they were _glowing_. It wasn’t like the light was on, of course, but it also didn’t allowed the room to be completly dark, especially because there was so many of them, emanating a delicate baby green light. And they were _cute_, they made her heart slow down and her muscles less tense.

Shaw knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway, but that made her calmer, more relaxed, it made her feel like being in the dark wasn’t that scary after all, because she had those crazy stickers to look at. She wondered how long it would take her to count every single one of them, but she had some time to figure it out.

Without warning, Root’s hand shot up from her pillow and crossed her chest, half hugging her. The hacker’s head moved while her face frowned until her forehead was resting against the marine’s shoulder. She definitelly had no respect for personal space, but Shaw didn’t cared about it. Not anymore. Instinctively, Shaw knew that Root was awake.

“Care to explain to me what the fuck is happening in my ceiling?” She whispered quietly so she wouldn’t scare the hacker.

Root froze for only a second, before a soft laugh met Shaw’s ears. “It’s a space battle.” The woman moved completly now that she knew she wasn’t going to wake up her girlfriend, sliding closer and closer until she had both arms around Shaw and her right leg found it’s way on top of Shaw’s thighs.

“Didn’t know t-rex lived in space.”

“Didn’t you study that in school? The big meteor took them there.” She could feel Root’s smile against her skin and that made her shiver a little.

Shaw moaned her agreement. “And bears?”

The hacker shugged. “Not every mistery in the Universe can be solved.”

Shaw chuckled at that, turning her head so she could press a gentle kiss in Root’s forehead – it went more on top of her head, but not the point. “I suppose you’re right.”

Root’s arms helded her a little tighter, cludding her closer. “Always am.”

“You better go back to sleep, Root, you’re starting to sound delirious.” The persian groaned when she tried to move her body a little so she wasn’t lying completly on her back. She uncrossed her arms, trying to slide her right one throught Root’s shoulders – the hacker lifted her head just the enough for her to do it – while her left one moved to the older woman’s thigh, just behind her knee.

Root let a delighted sigh out, her hot breath tickling the skin in Shaw’s neck. “Don’t be mean or I will replace them with flowers.”

“Like you have any free time to do it.” Shaw teased.

“I would find some or I would ask someone to do it.” The hacker yawned.

“Sleep, Root, before the delusions get you completly.” Shaw waited until the quiet snores filled the room again. “I love you.”


End file.
